<?php
/**
 * <https://y.st./>
 * Copyright © 2018 Alex Yst <mailto:copyright@y.st>
 * 
 * This program is free software: you can redistribute it and/or modify
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 * the Free Software Foundation, either version 3 of the License, or
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 * but WITHOUT ANY WARRANTY; without even the implied warranty of
 * MERCHANTABILITY or FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE. See the
 * GNU General Public License for more details.
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 * You should have received a copy of the GNU General Public License
 * along with this program. If not, see <https://www.gnu.org./licenses/>.
**/

$xhtml = array(
	'<{title}>' => 'Visit',
	'takedown' => '2017-11-01',
	'<{body}>' => <<<END
<img src="/img/CC_BY-SA_4.0/y.st./weblog/2018/09/10.jpg" alt="Outside the utility company&apos;s office" class="framed-centred-image" width="649" height="480"/>
<section id="visit">
	<h2>Visit</h2>
	<p>
		Cyrus came over for a visit today.
		He said he&apos;d come over at the beginning of the summer, but he&apos;s been putting that off.
		But now it&apos;s nearly time for him to go back to school, so he&apos;ll be leaving town soon.
		It was sort of now or never.
		I kind of wonder whether he actually wanted to visit or just felt obligated.
		I mean, he left me on hold for a couple months, not even keeping me in the loop as to what was going on, until our father pestered him about it.
		I can&apos;t help but feel that if he actually wanted to see me, he&apos;d at least have clued me in as to his plans early on.
	</p>
</section>
<section id="drudgery">
	<h2>Drudgery</h2>
	<p>
		My discussion posts for the day:
	</p>
	<blockquote>
		<p>
			Being a sickly child isn&apos;t fun.
			Myself, I had to go to the emergency room every other year for a while because my airway kept closing up.
			It was scary; each time, I thought I might die.
			And without modern medicine, I probably would have.
			Those of us that can&apos;t afford to live posh lifestyles tend to live on conditions in which disease is more common.
			Both environmental and biological factors contribute to these less healthy living spaces.
		</p>
		<p>
			I do think childhood illness can cause chronic illness as an adult as you ask, but I don&apos;t think it always does.
			As far as I can tell, the breathing issues caused me no long-term effects.
			I also had depression as a child, brought on by my toxic mother, which I guess you could call a childhood illness.
			When I moved out, I lived in fear at first due to the psychological damage she&apos;d done, but again, I&apos;m fine now.
			To cause a chronic illness, there needs to be a level of permanent damage.
			Some things are easier to recover from than others, and some people are more resistant.
		</p>
	</blockquote>
	<blockquote>
		<p>
			That&apos;s very interesting.
			I&apos;d always assumed that fevers were caused by the body having to exert more energy to recover.
			I mean, when stored energy is used, there&apos;s almost always some energy loss in the form of heat, even when heating isn&apos;t the goal.
			So if the body is exerting a lot of energy to wipe out an invasive microbe, it makes sense that the body would heat up as a result.
			If instead fever&apos;s a result of the hypothalamus malfunctioning and telling the body to heat up more, that means fevers aren&apos;t a symptom of the body fighting off invaders, but instead a resource consumer that leave less energy to be used to defend the body.
			It explains why it&apos;s so hard to cool fevers by physical means, too.
			The body reacts to cold temperatures by generating more heat.
			If the hypothalamus is perceiving normal temperatures as too cold, a cool rag is just going to cause the body to work harder to overheat.
			It also explains why not all illnesses cause fevers.
			Most illnesses don&apos;t specifically target the hypothalamus.
		</p>
		<p>
			All this makes fevers pretty scary.
			It&apos;s basically the body attacking itself due to confusion in the hypothalamus.
			The body heats itself up to temperatures that can cause itself permanent damage and even (in extreme cases) death.
			While more easily treatable than cancer, it sort fo reminds me of cancer in that it&apos;s the body turning on itself.
		</p>
		<p>
			I tend to keep calm on the outside and panic on the inside.
			If a loved one were to become brain-damaged by fever like that, I&apos;d probably research ways to fix it, but turn up empty handed.
		</p>
	</blockquote>
</section>
<section id="IRA">
	<h2>Dealing with the new $a[IRA] company</h2>
	<p>
		I finally got around to trying to set up the account for the $a[IRA] my employer is syphoning money from my pay cheques to fund.
		Their website doesn&apos;t allow creation of an account without entering a telephone number though.
		Obviously, I could just enter an obviously- bogus number, such as one composed of all zeroes.
		The correct plan of action would be to first try reaching out to the company though.
		By asking for help with the issue, I call their attention to the fact that they need to account for people without telephone service.
		They shouldn&apos;t have the telephone number field be mandatory.
		There&apos;s no time tonight though, and probably none tomorrow.
	</p>
</section>
END
);
